It’s oxymoronic to say that a vacation is stressful. But it is. And I’m not even talking about the sand that’s waiting to creep into your shorts on the beach, the hotel room that’s going to spring a leak, or the vast number of other disasters about to transpire throughout your travels.

I’m talking about the very, very beginning of your vacation: The part right after you’ve planned and purchased the tickets up until the moment you step off the plane at your intended (and final) destination. As a geek, you’re probably wondering if there’s a better way to go about “the routine:”

Funky name aside, these earbuds sport a patented magnetic connection technology that makes it easy to share your awesome tunes with friends and family. Provided Billy from next door is rocking the same set of earphones, he'll be able to snap them to yours and listen to the same music source. The other upshot is that you won't damage your earphones if you shake, rattle, and roll a little too vigorously

Humble Fish says it's primarily targeting kids and teens ages 9-19, which would explain the Skunk Juice nomenclature, but also expects these to appeal to musicians and artists in the studio, studio engineers, and consumers in general.

The Skunk Juice earbuds will go on sale later this month for an as-yet unannounced price.

Engineers designing earbuds face a choice these days: Should they build earbuds that support a variety of devices and perform a host of functions, or should they focus exclusively on digital media players and audio quality? The engineers who designed Razer’s Moray Plus Mobile Gaming Communicator decided to go for the gusto—and they almost made it.

The Morays can do a lot more than pump the latest Eels album down your ear canals. They come with an iPhone-compatible, in-line, omni-directional microphone; adapters for Sony’s PSP 2000/3000 and Nintendo’s DS/DS Lite handheld gaming systems; and a split stub cable you can plug into your PC’s headphone and mic jacks. Razer also thows in a padded carrying case that you’ll actually want to hang onto: It zips shut, includes mesh pockets for each accessory, and doesn’t look like your sister’s jewelry bag.

If you’re at all serious about the sound you feed your head, you’ve already replaced whatever craptastic headphones (aka earbuds, earphones, or in-ear monitors) came in the box with your digital media player of choice. Now you’re ready for another upgrade, and with the economy in turn-around mode, you can afford to splurge just a bit.

Type “earbud” into Amazon’s search box and you’ll get more than 4,000 results, so to guide you through the thicket, we picked out six pairs of sub-$100 in-ear monitors from the biggest names in the business: Audio-Technica, Klipsch, Sennheiser, SkullCandy, Ultimate Ears, and VModa. We then created a playlist on a third-generation iPhone populated with songs from a broad spectrum of styles, including classical, rock, jazz, world beat, funk, and techno from artists ranging from old-school (The Beatles) to new-school (White Rabbits) to cool-school (John Coltrane). We also made a point of selecting a mixture of electric and acoustic performances mastered with both analog and digital studio equipment. All tracks were ripped from CD (recordings produced with both analog and digital studio gear) and encoded in Apple Lossless format.

When we played the Cake ditty mentioned above at a family wedding a few years ago, everyone from five to 75 hopped to the dance floor to boogie. Listening to the Sennheiser CX 280’s had the same effect on us: We started boppin’ the instant their lush sound poured into our ear canals. And their $50 street price surprised us as much as our guests’ reaction to that song’s profane chorus.

One of the hallmarks of a great set of headphones is their ability to separate and place sounds in your head. A crappy set will make you feel claustrophobic; a great set will produce a big, wide sound stage. Listening to just about any track from The Who’s Quadrophenia will quickly separate the genuine article from the poseurs; the CX 280’s are the real deal.

Ladies and gentleman we give you the winner of the longest in-ear-monitor cord award!

To be fair, it's a double cord, which is a double bonus. The first cord about two feet long, which is perfect for jogging with an iPod Shuffle or something similar. Audio-Technica throws in a four-foot extension cable so you can plug in to your hi-fi system and kick back in your La-Z-Boy. We dig the flexibility (just don’t lose the extra cord).

Don’t bother reading this review if you’re not absolutely passionate about audio, because you’ll never understand how we can heap so much praise on a set of headphones that cost $1,100. Actually, headphones isn’t accurate; the JH|13 Pros are custom-manufactured in-ear monitors. And they’re better than great sex. Well, almost.

Back when you were little your mom told you not to stick things in your ears. You might want to rethink mom’s advice when it comes to Klipsch’s new Image S4 and S4i earbuds, which are right now making their way into retail outlets.

Klipsch’s new beauties come in either black or white, and feature dynamic moving coil micro speakers with a frequency response of 10Hz to 19kHz, a sensitivity of 110db SPL/mw, and a nominal impedance of 18 Ohms. Drive components consist of full range KG 25s. Each has a noise isolation rating of -16.

The difference between the two is the S4i’s inline microphone and three button remote, designed for smoother compatibility with the iPod and iPhone. The remote, according to Klipsch, is the first third-party remote to allow full control of an iPod or iPhone (but it is only fully compatible with the iPhone 3GS, 4th and 5th generation Nanos, 2nd generation Touches, and the iPod Classic).

While now available, there are some caveats. The black versions are widely available, including at Klipsch's own web site. The white version of the Image S4 will be exclusive to Vanns.com, while the white version of the Image S4i will only be available from Apple stores. The S4 has a retail price of $79.99, and the S4i has a retail price of $99.99.

Now that people wearing white earbuds has become the norm, it looks like inventor Kazuhiro Taniguchi is planning to make us all look goofy again.

With the announcement of some new earbuds that allow facial expressions to let you work your gadgets, there’s a small chance that we’ll be making funny faces for all the right reasons. According to Taniguchi, “You will be able to turn on room lights or swing your washing machine into action with a quick twitch of your mouth... An iPod can start or stop music when the wearer sticks his tongue out, like in the famous Einstein picture. If he opens his eyes wide, the machine skips to the next tune. A wink with the right eye makes it go back.”

While the idea of it is pretty neat, something tells me that most markets won’t be willing to go through this just to skip a track on their favorite playlist.

We’ve tested a lot of earbuds over the past few years and invariably
find ourselves gravitating toward products at the very high end of that
market—we’re talking buds that’ll set you back more than the most
expensive iPod. At $200, Future Sonics’s Atrio m8 earbuds certainly
aren’t cheap—but they’re competitive with some products that cost twice
as much.